olympic hockey and pizza courtesy of Vito’s via Ricky.

Congrats to the Canadian men’s (and women’s) hockey team.  Silver ain’t so bad tho.

I received this in my inbox from an anonymous source.  An anonymous source that I trust.  Lets call him/her “Deep Throat.”  Here are some excerpts from my conversation with this “Deep Throat.”

____________________________________________________________
“I urge you to search Peter’s (Caserta, Stuzzi Owner) name see the sort of information you find. The guy is seedy and one of the most stereotypical, narcissistic fellows I’ve ever met. Conniving doesn’t do justice to the manipulative spirit on which this guy operates, on a momentary basis”

“Among his many grandiose claims, he stated that his family taught Americans how to cook Italian food. He openly denigrated various ‘famous’ chefs in NY and the US (of course claiming he was better).”

“He and the chef are opening this place with a plan to flip it more than twenty times across the region (20 restaurants!). Their investment pool is massive, from individuals all the way up to the mother company that owns Outback, Carrabas, Flemmings, P.F. Chang’s etc (once again, just a claim, but apparently they are ‘in the game watching’)”

“These guys just like the sound of words, the lack actual knowledge or attention to detail”

“… lowly employee’s will be mandated to sign a blanket non-compete because what they’re doing involves ‘secrets’.”

“[This] is simply a vignette that establishes a glimpse Peter’s (and presumably Giuseppe’s) ‘passion’ which seems to be chicanery and dirty money.”
-(maybe a dangerous comment)

“The pizza however, will probably be good. When I say ‘good’ I mean above average but not great. The true loss, is that Richmond’s first ‘Neapolitan-style’ pizza place is illusion, or at best half hearted. Their oven will probably produce results that look visually appealing; it will be a great oven. Whether they know how to use it will be the question, working a fire oven takes acquired skill, rhythm, wisdom that I doubt either of them posses.”

“I guess if one has money one can do anything to a point. A good comparison is Capital Alehouse: they can afford to sell any beer but the place still blows. In this case the market always wins, market ‘competition’ is good for the market, not for people, but that’s another story.”

http://social.richmond.com/blog/kpeifer/2010/02/stuzzi-is-coming/

Had a buddy forward me this story from another local writer. Looks like some people from restaurants around here are teaming up to open a place on Belmont called Stuzzi. They plan to offer wood fired pie and a decent menu at decent prices. Apparently they have even applied for outdoor seating. I don’t know how that will affect the quality of the pizza but it may prove critical.

Grant has $20 on this place being a let down. For no particular reason, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Since we’ve been doing this pizza blog our friends have started sending us pictures of all the pizza they come across in their lives.  The Twitter pic thing we have on this site doesn’t do some of these pies justice so I’m gonna start doing a weekly post of all the crap we’ve gotten in our cell phones over the past week.

Enjoi.

This was someone’s breakfast today.  Looks like Assante’s.

My friend was in Miami and he said all the pizza shops there have pizza stacked up like this.

More weird looking Miami pie.  Nice blotches of mozzarella on these utility slices a’la Naples.

My friend Matt went to a pizza place in NOVA called Faccia Luna and saved me a slice of this stuff.  Two weeks ago.  I still haven’t gotten my slice.

We now officially get paid to write about pizza. What’s up?

Forget the microwave.  Cold pizza tastes better than nuked shit.

What you want is a toaster oven.  It will do a really good job of restoring the crisp texture back to the crust.

Most toaster ovens have a temperature setting much like a regular oven and then a high setting called “toast.”  This is what I usually make use of.

1.  Set to “toast”

2.  Set timer to medium

3.  Grab your cold slice and take it over to the sink

4.  Run your free hand under the water.  Remove and let excess water drip from your hand and on to the top of the slice, covering the toppings part, not the crust. (Learned this trick from an old roommate).  This puts moisture back into the cheese so it can be absorbed during heating.

5.  Place slice into the toaster oven directly on the rack.  Do not use a toaster pan.  The oven should already be on since you did this way back in step 2.  I’m a real time-saving kind of gent.

6.  Wait for the timer to go off or monitor the progress of the slice to your liking.  You should be able to hear a little sizzling going on.

7.  Put on a plate and enjoy.  You can use a reverse microwave if the pizza is too hot so you don’t burn the roof of your mouth.

And I’m not just saying that  because I’ve recently moved in with one of their managers.  Their pizza as of late has been off the chain.  The crust, the sauce, their white pizza.  Everything.  It’s great.  And the best part?  Most of this shit I’ve been reheating in the toaster oven long after roommate brings it home.

White pizza with tomato, spinach, feta and enough garlic to repulse your girlfriend tonight.  I reheated these slices (sorry Ellen, I ate em both.  For the sake of my work!) more than 12 hours after it had been originally served.  A little dab of water and give it about3 minutes directly on the grate on high heat and it’s good to go.

What makes Tarrant’s pizza so great lies in the crust.  For me, the crust is the most important part of a good pizza.  I know a lot of snooty pizza lovers will say that all of the ingredients are just as important as the other but this is where my tastes fall out of sync with the elite paisanos of pizza.  You see, bread in itself is probably my favorite thing to eat in the world.  As a kid, I would eat entire boxes of Papa John’s bread sticks by myself.  It wasn’t rare for my to just grab a slice of Wonder bread and ball it up into a doughy mass and chew on it for a while.  At restaurants, I was the first one to ask for more free bread.  Its addicting and pretty much bad for you, but that’s what makes it so delicious.

I can deal with sub-par cheese and a dirty, sweet tasting sauce as long as the crust is delicious.  No, I’m not saying Tarrant’s ingredients fall short in any category.  Everything is great.  With all the praise that we give 8 1/2 Pizza on here, I am not afraid to say that my craving for pizza as of late lies solely with a small Tarrant’s cheese pizza.  At $9.99 most people would say it’s overpriced and yeah, maybe it is a little.  But maybe it’s not.  The old adage “You get what you pay for,” is something that I’ve repeated to myself and others my whole life.  This isn’t a guideline that anyone should follow by any means, but generally better things cost more money.

This beauty I was able to eat not long after it was cooked.  White pizza with spinach and mushrooms.  One of the best white pizzas I’ve had in recent memory and the crust was so perfectly cooked I had to ask who threw it together.  My roommate’s mom bakes some crucial stuff in Tarrant’s kitchen.

You can think what you will, but I’m not biased at all!

You can find us abusing the 900 block west of Belvidere most of the time. Between Grace and Franklin St., we have spent many a night and wallet supporting the saloons. While it is very routine to come home late and order pizza or pull a frozen pie from the icebox, it has never crossed my mind to dine in at 2am. Over the last few months friends of mine have been getting obliterated and oddly enough their final destination was a pizza one in the last place on earth I would ever expect, Sahara.

I will have my presence there be known under the strict circumstances that I am an investigative journalist in many respects. I don’t get the college appeal of smoking hookas and listening to club music in a place that used to be a Burger King / Mr. Submarine. Even in my first year at school, hearing the rumors about crazy ragers at Mr. Submarine, I was never once tempted to head over and sweat out my immature boner in a kitchen remodeled with strobe lights. I will give them credit for covering much of the appearance up. If you dressed the place down a little bit and had a drink menu, you could maybe make some serious competition for Xscape, formerly Hyperlink Shoot-out Headquarters of America.

The pizza? Not the worst thing I have ever had. In fact, for 10 bucks it was more than I expected. I managed to stomach 2 slices of cheese. This stuff had plenty of cheese, greasy, gooey, and piping hot. Held together by a crust that bordered on thin. The portions were fair and there was nothing terribly good or bad about it. Surely a late night drunk pie in its own right. The sauce likes to sit in your chest for a good 8 or 10 hours. If you are heartburn prone, I would take caution.